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Interview advice that got me offers

zainrizvi.io

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Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#351

Post by MeinBlutIstBlau »

mynameishere wrote: post #330
MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That infantryman comment is blatantly false. The literal bare minimum entry level job in the military is infantry. Like if you pass the ASVAB with the lowest score possible, you are infantry without a say in the matter. The army wants dumb people to get hit with bullets first. Then the laborer types, then the admins. Thats why those "better" jobs are harder to get.

That "lowest score possible" for the Army is a 31 percentile on the AFQT, which is a proxy for an IQ score. That means about 100 million Americans are too stupid to carry a rifle. My understanding is that the real score is actually higher than the advertised minimum.

I've taken the ASVAB and it is definitely not a meter of IQ. Middle school children who at least know simple algebra would have no problems scoring fairly well.

The ASVAB iirc was designed to determine critical thinking and mechanical skills. If you aced it, you either studied or shouldn't be in the army.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#352

Post by KwisatzHaderack »

decafninja wrote: post #152
Bahamut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can confirm as a senior engineer at a FAANG. I've rejected people for showing negative non-technical traits but being ok technically, and recommended people for hire with not the best technical skills but with excellent non-technical/leadership traits. Life is too short to work with assholes if it can be helped.

Although this is welcome to hear, it's not something a candidate can count on reliably nor something they can really control. After all, a candidate can come off as likeable to one interviewer and unlikeable to another. Versus just being able ace through leetcode problems - that's a more objective criteria a candidate has more control over. Personal anecdote. I interviewed at a FAANG, got rejected. They actually offe…

> candidate can come off as likeable to one interviewer and unlikeable to another.

> I apparently got rejected was that "I asked too many (clarifying) questions" about the leetcode problem.

> I get rejected again, and given feedback. One of the reasons given? "I asked too few questions".

It sounds like they didn't like you _personally_. If the rejection reason wasn't due to technical or behavioral mismatch but a fake reason like the ones above, it's the often the problematic "Airport test" (ie. They don't want to be stuck in an airport with you"reason).

And to be clear, I think it's wrong to reject candidates because you personally can't think of "being friends" with them. It's unfair to both the candidate, but also the company as it misses out on great engineers.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#353

Post by closeparen »

blub wrote: post #296
CobrastanJorji wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interviewing should normally have two results: the candidate was able to demonstrate the appropriate skills, or the candidate was not. Not being able to demonstrate the right skills in the interview does not mean that the candidate is a bad programmer or even a bad fit for the job. It just means that I was not able to verify their bona fides in that hour. That's the difference between "that interview didn't go well"…

Why do you think that whenever we discuss interviews on HN, there's several highly upvoted comments complaining about how many incompetent people show up for interviews and how this basically makes coding interviews necessary? I think it's because most interviewers consider people that failed their interview bad programmers.

Trying to be charitable, I think that is about people failing FizzBuzz not LC Hard.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#354

Post by closeparen »

shemnon42 wrote: post #281
closeparen wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You get classroom training, shadow hours, supervised hours, and certification on a particular type of interview. From that day forward any open slot on your calendar is fair game for Recruiting to schedule, up to 3 per week. You might get away with a "No" RSVP if you have a good excuse, but not in general. It's part of your job.

Three a week? What SVP did your group piss off? Or are they back to the 4 rejects per hire game?

It was like that during hyper growth and also during massive attrition in tougher times. Now it’s more like 0-1.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#355

Post by chestervonwinch »

dbcurtis wrote: post #324
chestervonwinch wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems like there would a substantial amount of luck involved in getting schedules and offers to line up just right like this.

IMO as a practical matter the way to manage this is to have an a active pipeline and manage your callendar to pull the B-grade opportunities earlier and push out the A-grade opportunities. Telling a recruiter “I am actively talking to a couple other companies” is usually an accelerant and seeds FOMO. So, I agree with you that it takes some luck. But good strategy makes you ready for whatever luck happens. Play backga…

> good strategy makes you ready for whatever luck happens

Yes, I agree that attempting to schedule things in this manner is better than not, should you find yourself able to do so. But, I don't agree with the parent comment that it is "the ultimate and most powerful interviewing technique". Scheduling by preference is moot if (1) you don't have a resume/background that lands interviews in the first place and (2) you don't have the chops to be successful in technical rounds.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#356

Post by tharkun__ »

oblio wrote: post #346
tharkun__ wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well the thing is that if they name a number first they will assess whether you'd go for the 100 even if they would top out at 150 and then just offer you the 100 or say 110 or something. This will set the "tone" and the base number for negotiation. Your mind will be thinking "he said 110, so I guess they might go to 120" so you'll maybe ask for 130 and accept the 120 they offer you next. Queue up yourself asking for…

They don't need to know your current salary.

Absolutely agree. Some will ask what your current salary is outright. None of their business, they just need to know what I want them to pay me.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#357

Post by jlj »

Answerawake wrote: post #349
jlj wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you end up with a network of the good ones? > I have wanted to escape the dreaded cycle of dealing with these terrible recruiters Focus on yourself. When you are in a good place yourself you will find non-terrible recruiters. And when recruiters reach out, have a copy/paste response to say thanks for reaching out. +1 bonus points if you have a friend looking for a job and you can share their LinkedIn profile…

Its not like I don't focus on improving myself. Who doesn't focus on improving themselves in this industry? You have to keep improving or else you are finished at some point. Imagine a circle of the stimulating inspiring well paid jobs and another circle filled with the painful, boring non noteworthy jobs. The circles don't overlap. Somehow through connections, impressing that one higher up or being in the right plac…

I meant something slightly different (and I did not write it very well at all), but to give an example I spent the first 15+ years of my career chasing success, upskilling, focusing on self improvement. And my identity became tightly coupled to my work and each little win felt good for a day or two, then felt empty pretty quickly after that. When I let all that go and found a stronger sense of self worth, I found much more career success than I ever had before without really trying so hard for it. It came more naturally. Therapy helped me with this journey.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#358

Post by cercatrova »

murgindrag wrote: post #310
BurningFrog wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basically you're telling the candidate that you want to underpay them now, so you can eventually pay them what they are worth Stared at this for a while, and can make no sense of it.

Candidate thinks they're worth $250k. Employer pay bracket is $200k. Options: 1. Bend policy at hiring. $250k. $250k. $250k. $250k. $250k. $250k (no raises) 2. Follow salary brackets. $200k. $210k. $220k. $230k. $240k. $250k (low initial salary, catch up over time) Having been on both sides, it's nearly impossible to make the case for bending policy further at annual reviews. Over time, employees converge to pay brac…

No raises are fine if they make it clear from their hiring that you're being paid above band. Also, raises aren't really the way to move up in tech, it's to jump ship as you say.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#359

Post by cercatrova »

uh_uh wrote: post #184
dcolkitt wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that industrial psychology has consistently found that fluid intelligence is the best predictor of job performance. Even more so than experience.[0] Whiteboard interviews are used, not because they have a lot of relevance to the job, but because they're a hard-to-fake indicator of high intelligence. Somebody who shows a lot of mental fluidity with complex data structures, almost assuredly can quickly m…

Doing well on whiteboard interviews can be a sign of high intelligence (a true positive result). But what signal does doing poorly on them give? Did you measure the candidate's intelligence (true negative), or preparedness maybe anxiety levels (false negative)? I guess the answer is that it does not matter as long as you have a large enough true positive candidate pool. And FAANG has this.

Companies don't care about false negatives, they don't want false positives because that is concretely lost revenue, rather than not hiring someone.

Re: Interview advice that got me offers

#360

Post by cercatrova »

biztos wrote: post #216
drchopchop wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We need to band together and stop rewarding companies who pull this shit in interviews. Leetcode problems are not applicable to 99% of the actual work in most software engineering roles. There are other, gentler ways to find out if someone knows what binary trees, dynamic programming, sorting, and big O notation are.

One tried and true way to “band together” is to form a union, but somehow I don’t think I’ll see that in my lifetime for my industry.

What use would a union be for such a highly paid and fluid industry? Genuinely curious.
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